Evaluating the Characteristics of Disaster Waste Management in Practice: Case Studies from Queensland and New South Wales, Australia

Savindi Caldera; Chamari Jayarathna; Cheryl Desha

doi:10.3390/su17146300

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Evaluating the Characteristics of Disaster Waste Management in Practice: Case Studies from Queensland and New South Wales, Australia

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Evaluating the Characteristics of Disaster Waste Management in Practice: Case Studies from Queensland and New South Wales, Australia

Savindi Caldera, Chamari Jayarathna and Cheryl Desha

Sustainability, Vol.17(14), pp.1-17

2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/su17146300

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Abstract

disaster waste management

disaster resilience

case study

Queensland

New South Wales

Australia

Disaster waste management (DWM) has gained much attention due to the issues associated with the enormous amount of disaster waste generated by natural disasters. However, moving beyond ad hoc and champion-based take-up by practitioners, there is generally a lack of momentum towards mainstreaming such DWM practices to achieve resilient outcomes. This study aims to explore the characteristics of DWM practices, drawing on the lived experiences of industry practitioners and government decision-makers. An interpretive case study method was used to investigate how local government organisations could readily engage in effective DWM processes using the “Resilient disaster management framework” previously established by the research team. Insights include a lack of documented plans for DWM and at best a moderate focus on recovery processes for disaster waste. With these issues counterproductive to community resilience outcomes, there is an urgent need to better manage disaster waste, which we propose can be enabled and supported through DWM plans. The extended ‘resilient DWM framework’ proposed in this study provides a useful reference to prepare practical, agile, and comprehensive DWM plans.

Details

Title: Evaluating the Characteristics of Disaster Waste Management in Practice: Case Studies from Queensland and New South Wales, Australia
Authors: Savindi Caldera (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast
Chamari Jayarathna - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Cheryl Desha - Griffith University
Publication details: Sustainability, Vol.17(14), pp.1-17
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date published: 2025
DOI: 10.3390/su17146300
ISSN: 2071-1050
Copyright note: © 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Data Availability: The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.
Grant note: This research was funded by the University of the Sunshine Coast Spark Grant (Career interruption category, 2024).
Organisation Unit: School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991144497602621
Output Type: Journal article

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